There it is already. The New Year is right at the door. To celebrate this new beginning, there’s nothing better than a cake. Here, you’ll find 12 Gorgeous New Year Cake Ideas Suited To Your Baking Skills. Baking might be part of your New Year’s resolutions and thanks to my cake idea lists sorted by level, you’ll be able to create the cake of your dreams in no time.
How to find a cake idea for the New Year suited to your cake-decorating level?
I’ve come up with a system. The cake ideas are presented to you according to their level of difficulty. There are three categories :
What Are Beginner Cake Ideas?
These are the easy cake ideas. If you’ve never decorated a cake before (or only did it once or twice), these are the cakes that you should pay attention to.
- What you’ll find: Beautiful cake ideas that only require basic cake decorating techniques. This is a great place to start your journey.
What Are Intermediate Cake Ideas?
Low Intermediate Baker: If you are confident that you’ve mastered the cake decorating basics, such as how to smooth a cake, but feel like you still have a lot of techniques to learn apart from this foundation, this category is perfect for you.
- What you’ll find: New Year’s cake ideas that require both basic decorating skills and one or two techniques that are a little bit more advanced. This is a great place to grow your cake decorating skills.
High Intermediate Baker: If you’ve mastered both basic techniques and several more advanced cake decorating techniques, these cake ideas are made for you.
- What you’ll find: Stunning cake ideas that can be fairly challenging, but are a great place to get even better than you already are.
What Are Advanced Cake Ideas?
If you consider yourself an experienced cake decorator and have mastered most of the decorating techniques, including the use of fondant, then this is the perfect place for you.
- What you’ll find: Showstopping and challenging cake ideas, perfect to sharpen and maintain your skills.
The Grading System
Finally, I’ve also assigned a grade of difficulty to each cake inspiration: 1/5 being the easiest design to 5/5 being the hardest one. The goal is to make the ranking the most accurate possible. You will find this to be particularly helpful if you happen to fall in the Beginner or the Intermediate Cake Ideas categories.
Growth Tip : This list is great a place to set goals about your cake decorating skills. Pin this post and come back later to tell us how far you’ve come in your cake decorating journey !
How to recreate these New Year’s cake ideas?
What cake recipe should you use to make your perfect cake come true?
To recreate these cake ideas, you will need a trustworthy cake recipe. You have several options.
Adapt your favorite cake recipe
There are a lot of ways to adapt a cake recipe to be even more festive than usual. Here are three suggestions:
- First, you could go for a champagne cake. I don’t know if it’s because I’m French but to me, the New Year and champagne definitely go hand in hand.
- You could also choose to turn your recipe into a Funfetti cake. Sprinkles are a nice touch to reminisce of the confetti we throw on the 31st of December.
- Finally, you could also go for a surprise cake. If you don’t know what it is, these are the cakes that when cut there’s a ton of sprinkles, sweets, or chocolate (or anything you want really) in the middle.
I feel like the New Year is the perfect moment to get out of your comfort zone and experiment with new things. Please, let us know in the comments if you did.
Be careful, if you’re a beginner baker, having to figure out both your cake design and creating a new cake recipe could be overwhelming. Therefore, I always recommend taking your learning journey one step at a time.
Look for a cake recipe
Where? You can ask friends, or family or simply look on the internet. You have to keep two things in mind though :
- The recipe has to be suitable for cake decorating, especially for cakes that require stacking or carving (intermediate and advanced cake ideas).
- Once again, if you’re a beginner baker, be careful not to put too much on your plate and choose a recipe suited to your current level.
Use my New Year’s cake recipe recommendations
To celebrate the beginning of the New Year, I recommend the Pink Champagne Cake recipe from My Cake School.
What you will love about this recipe :
- It’s a unique flavor, perfect for the New Year
- It’s a really easy recipe.
- It tastes amazing!
If you’d prefer a non-alcoholic recipe recommendation, the Confetti Layer Cake recipe of Sall’s Baking is the perfect recipe to celebrate the start of the year.
How to follow the instructions of the designs.
For the cake designs in the beginner category: I’ll provide written instructions on how to recreate the cake idea presented to you. Don’t hesitate to watch video tutorials about the basic techniques such as how to smooth a cake.
For the designs in the intermediate category: I’ll provide some guidance on how to perform the more complicated techniques.
For the advanced category: you are an experienced baker, at this point, and you will find great opportunities to put this experience to use. To be completely honest, I cannot make myself several cake ideas from the advanced category, so trust your abilities and go for it.
Find the perfect New Year’s cake idea for your baking skills.
Growth Tip : If you aim to get better at cake decorating, you should choose a cake idea that feels sligthly above your current cake decorating level. Get out of your comfort zone !
New Year’s Cake Ideas Perfect for Beginner Bakers
Here, you’ll find 4 easy cake ideas perfect for beginner bakers.
A Silver Cake For The New Year
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
This silver cake has everything you want on a cake celebrating the new year. And, it’s beginner-friendly as the only technique required is frosting smoothing.
What you will need:
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Silver decorations and sprinkles as in the picture
How to recreate this cake?
- First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
- Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes (until your frosting sets) in the fridge.
- Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you.
- Chill your cake again for 15 minutes.
- Smooth the top edges with your offset spatula moving from the edges of the cake to the center.
- Finally, decorate the cake with your decorations and sprinkles following the picture or your heart’s desire. You could also use these decorations to hide any imperfections.
What you’ve learned :
As a beginner, cake toppers are your best friend. They can make the most basic cake look amazing in an instant.
An Elegant New Year’s Cake
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
If you’re looking for a more refined and elegant look, this is the cake for you.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- New Year’s cake topper
- Edible gold leaves and a thin paintbrush to apply it (one that you only use for baking)
- Organic flowers → don’t forget to wrap the stems with floral tape, so they don’t come into direct contact with the cake.
- You could also use artificial flowers.
How to recreate this cake?
- First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
- Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes (until your frosting sets) in the fridge.
- Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you.
- Now you’re going to recreate the texture on the bottom left and upper right of the cake. With your offset spatula, apply a little bit of your buttercream with a dot motion. Repeat until you consider there’s enough texture.
- Chill your cake again for 30 minutes (until your frosting sets).
- Make sure your frosting is set. Then, with your paintbrush, transfer gold leaf bits from the sheet of paper to the cake. Don’t use your fingers, it will stick to it.
- Cut the top edges of the cake with a hot knife to get sharp edges.
- Finally, decorate the cake with your flowers and cake topper following the pictures or your heart’s desire.
What you’ve learned :
Gold leaves definitely aren’t as hard to use as they look. And, just like playing with texture, they’ll make your design stand out.
An Easy and Festive Cake
Difficulty Level: 1,5/5.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- New Year’s decorations
- Gold and silver sprinkles
- Macarons and popcorns
How to recreate this cake?
- First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
- Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes (until your frosting sets) in the fridge.
- Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you.
- With the tip of your spatula, you can recreate the wave pattern. Put it against the bottom of your cake and spin your turn table while doing up-and-down motions, while slowly reaching the top of the cake.
- Chill your cake again for 15 minutes.
- Smooth the top edges with your offset spatula moving from the edges of the cake to the center.
- Finally, decorate the cake with your decorations, sprinkles, macarons, and popcorn following the pictures or your heart’s desire.
What you’ve learned :
Adding texture to your cake is one of the easiest ways to start upping your cake-decorating game.
A New Year’s Bento Cake
Difficulty Level: 1,5/5
What you will need :
- Enough black frosting to cover and decorate your cake
- If you don’t know how to color your buttercream in black, you should follow this quick tutorial.
- A piping bag and a piping tip similar to the 1M by Wilton (star tip)
- Alphabet silicon mold
- White chocolate
- Edible gold paint
- Golden sprinkles
How to recreate this cake?
- First, crumb coat, cover your cake with your black frosting, and chill it as explained in the previous designs.
- To pipe the shell border, hold the piping bag at a 45-degree angle slightly above the cake’s edge.
- Squeeze the piping bag to release the icing, and pull the bag slightly towards you, forming a shell shape. The motion should resemble a small wave.
- Keep piping shells to form a continuous border around the cake. Maintain a consistent angle and pressure for uniform shells.
- Remember, you can always practice on a sheet of parchment paper before piping on the actual cake
- For the chocolate letters, melt the chocolate using a double boiler or microwave, stirring frequently to ensure smooth consistency.
- Transfer the melted chocolate into a piping bag. and pipe it into the letter molds.
- Tap the molds gently on the counter to remove any air bubbles. Use a spatula to smooth the surface of the chocolate.
- Chill the chocolate in the refrigerator or freezer to allow the chocolate to set (30 minutes to an hour).
- Once the chocolate has set, carefully remove the letters from the molds, paint them in gold, and place them on your cake with your fingers or kitchen tweezers.
- Finally, place your golden sprinkles
What you’ve learned :
You’re now able to decorate this kind of cake, which is really popular these days.
New Year’s Cake Ideas for Intermediate Bakers
Here, you’ll find 5 intermediate cake ideas for bakers who’ve acquired solid cake decorating foundations.
A Bento Cake Assortment.
Difficulty Level: 2/5 (Low Intermediate)
These cakes really aren’t harder to make than the last one. But, considering there are four of them, it cannot be considered as a beginner design. On the other hand, it is a really good place to transition from beginner to intermediate. As in many other domains, practice does make perfect!
A little guidance
If this design seems a bit overwhelming to you, don’t hesitate to spread the making of the cakes over several days. For example, you could bake them on day one, and only decorate them on day 2. You could even make these cakes over 3 days. As I always say, to keep things fun don’t put too much on your plate too fast.
A Christmas Tree Cake
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (High Intermediate)
This cake design is everything I love. It reminds you of winter, and the holidays, and above all it’s super cute.
I consider it to be a high intermediate cake because the writing on the side was something I really struggled to master. Moreover, the piping of the Christmas trees is really detailed. This is proof that a simple design does not necessarily equate to simple techniques.
A little guidance
If you also struggle with writing on the side of your cake, make sure to let your cake chill long enough for the buttercream to set before writing on it. This way, if you’re not satisfied with your writing you can scrap it off without having to fear you’ll mess up with the frosting.
A Marble New Year’s Cake
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High Intermediate)
This marble cake simply looks amazing. I think it’s the perfect starting point to learn to use fondant. As it doesn’t cover all the cake, this design is more forgiving. You still have to work with fondant to create this marble effect, which makes this cake a high-intermediate cake design.
A little guidance
To recreate the marble effect, be sure not to mix your two colors too much, and don’t roll your fondant too thin.
A Black and Golden Cake
Difficulty level: 4/5 (Low Intermediate)
This cake will take your fondant skills to the next level. The mix of fondant and buttercream simply looks beautiful.
A little guidance
When using black fondant, I personally think it’s better to buy it pre-colored than to color it yourself. You’d need a huge amount of food coloring to get the perfect shade, and that would affect the consistency of your fondant.
New Year’s Cake Ideas for Advanced Bakers
Finally, you’ll find complex New Year’s cake ideas for advanced bakers.
A Confetti New Year’s Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
This cake is a masterpiece. Honestly, I’m just in awe. With its giant homemade chocolate cake topper and its super cute fondant confetti, there’s no doubt this cake will make an impression on your New Year’s Eve party.
A Gatsby Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Whether your New Year’s Eve party is Gatsby-themed or not, this cake is a perfect fit for the New Year. Gold, gems, and feathers: who wouldn’t want to start the year this way?
A Holiday-Themed Cake For The New Year
Difficulty Level: 5/5
If you’re the kind of person who wants the holiday season to last forever (like me) this cake is the one for you. It’s also a perfect opportunity to put your fondant skills to use.
A Christmas Ball New Year’s Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
The New Year is the perfect opportunity to set new goals and tackle new challenges. And what better challenge is there than to recreate this magnificent Christmas Ball? Let’s be honest, this design clearly requires a lot of confidence and technique, but the result is simply gorgeous.
Did you enjoy these New Year’s cake inspirations? Sharing is caring!
Please let me know in the comments and/or tag me on Instagram @theperfectcakeidea. I’d love to see your creations. And, don’t forget to pin this post so you can come back to it.
Pin this post and come back to it later.
